Responding to the announcement yesterday, TVP Chief Constable Francis Habgood said: “I am pleased to hear today that the Chancellor has acknowledged the need to protect police services by deciding not to make further cuts to police budgets in the next year”. Further education students and postgraduate students will also be able to get tuition fee loans.
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This goes a long way to explaining why he could protect police spending, frontload previously promised additional investment in the NHS and reverse those controversial changes to tax credits which threatened to penalise the very people who are striving to become less dependent on the benevolence of the welfare system.
Chancellor George Osborne pulled more than a few surprises from his little red box during the spending review on Wednesday afternoon, including a complete U-turn on tax credit cuts and a boost to the budgets of a number of public sector services.
The outcome of his long-awaited comprehensive spending review is that the damage done to science since austerity politics took hold will not be deepened too much. Thanks to our commitment to the triple lock, next year the basic state pension will rise by £3.35 to £119.30 a week.
Osborne announced plans to help build 400,000 affordable homes, a decision that had prompted British newspapers to print images of him in a hard hat and describe him as “George the Builder”.
Not everyone on benefits has been protected by Osborne’s U-turn.
“The changes to local government financing and devolution are genuinely radical and could transform both the role of local government and the UK’s fiscal architecture”. We’re also going to open 500 new free schools and University Technical Colleges, and invest £23 billion in school buildings and 600,000 new school places.
In his new Budget, the Chancellor announced that Local Authorities will now have the power to raise their Council Tax rates by four per cent a year. With tax credits spared, the question remains as to where the axe will fall to achieve this.
“But by the end of the parliament many working people will still suffer big losses because he is keeping planned cuts to universal credit”.
“However, this is not the full and fair reversal we demanded, as he is still taking £1bn from working families next year – and over £3bn by the end of the Parliament – as tax credits are replaced by Universal Credit”.
“I’m today announcing there will be no cuts in the police budget at all and there will be real term protection for police funding”.
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“We believe it’s the right decision given the variety of threats we’re facing”.
